The Wanton GreenEdited by Gordon MacLellan & Susan Cross

As our relationship with the world unravels and needs to take a new form, The Wanton Green presents a collection of inspiring, provoking and engaging essays by modern pagans about their own deep, passionate and wanton relationships with the Earth.

“Where do we locate the sacred? In a place, a meeting, memory, a momentary glimpse? The Wanton Green provides no easy answers and instead, offers a multitude of perspectives on how our relationships with the earth, the sacred, the world through which we move are forged and remade.” – Phil Hine.

Contents: Foreword (Graham Harvey) ,”She said: ‘You have to lose your way'”(Maria van Daalen), Fumbling in the landscape (Runic John), Finding the space, finding the words (Rufus Harrington),Stone in my bones (Sarah Males), A Heathen in place: working with Mugwort (Robert Wallis),Wild, wild water (Lou Hart), Facing the waves (Gordon MacLellan),The dragon waters of place: a journey to the source (Susan Greenwood), Catching the Rainbow Lizard (Maria van Daalen), The rite to roam (Julian Vayne), Places of Power (Jan Fries), Natural magic is art (Greg Humphries), Pagan Ecology: on our perception of nature, ancestry and home (Emma Restall Orr), Because we have no imagination, (Susan Cross), The crossroads of perception, (Shani Oates), Devon, Faeries and me, (Woody Fox), Lud’s Church, (Gordon MacLellan), Places of spirit and spirits of place: of Fairy and other folk, and my Cumbrian bones (Melissa Montgomery), A life in the woods: protest site paganism, (Adrian Harris) We first met in the north, (Barry Patterson), Museum or Mausoleum (Mogg Morgan), Hills of the ancestors, townscapes of artisans (Jenny Blain), Smoke and mirrors (Stephen Grasso), America (Maria van Daalen), Standing at the crossroads, Meet the authors .

About the editors:

Gordon MacLennan is a shaman, storyteller and artist whose work sets out to find ways of celebrating the relationships between people, place and wildlife. Gordon’s books include Talking to the Earth, Sacred Animals and Celebrating Nature (all with Capall Bann), StarMatter and the Piatkus Guide to Shamanism.

Susan Cross is a poet, heritage and environmental interpretation consultant and occasional pirate. About a decade ago she realised that she has probably always been some kind of animist mystic and since then has endeavoured to make that a more conscious, clearer and brighter part of her life.

The Wanton Green: Contemporary Pagan Writings On Place. Edited by Gordon MacLellan and Susan Cross (Mandrake). Since the 1970s modern forms of pagan witchcraft (Wicca) and the neo-pagan movement have defined themselves by an engagement and involvement with ecology, the environment and ‘green’ politics with their adherents claiming to be following a ‘nature religion’. This is a collection of essays on the genii loci, or ‘spirit of place’ in the natural world written by various Wiccans and neo-pagans including Shani Oates, Rufus Harrington, Emma Restall-Orr, Melissa Montgomery, Jan Fries, Julian Vayne, Barry Montgomery, Barry Paterson, Susan Greenwood, Mogg Morgan and others. The contents range from an experience of the faery folk in Devon to a psychogeographical guide to ‘occult London’. If you are interested in the non-traditional neo-pagan approach to nature and the environment then this book is recommended. – The Cauldron #144, May 2012.